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Ethernet’s long-awaited Merge Upgrade is nearing completion, but it’s not the final milestone on the platform’s development roadmap. Miles Deutscher, a crypto analyst, recently posted a tweet explaining the five phases that the network must go through before it reaches completion.
The Surge and the Merge
The five phases , as named by Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum co-founder, are “The Merge,” The Surge,” The Verge,” The Purge,” and “The Splurge .”
The Merge involves the “merging” of Ethereum’s current blockchain, the execution layer, with the Beacon Chain, the consensus layer. It will also transform Ethereum’s consensus mechanism, which is now proof of work, to proof of stake.
The move is expected to cut Ethereum’s power usage by 99% while reducing the asset’s net issuance. Many expect Ethereum issuance to be net positive ,, thus earning it the nickname “ultrasound money .”
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The asset jumped this month after an ecosystem developer revealed that the Merge upgrade could go live by September 19th. Vitalik has stated that testing for the Merge is now 90% complete and that Ethereum will be about 55% complete following its implementation.
Next is “The Surge”, which will bring sharding on the Ethereum blockchain. Sharding, a scaling solution that divides Ethereum into different partitions or “shards”, is used to distribute the network’s computational load. This upgrade is planned for 2023, and will roughly bring Ethereum to 80% completion based on Vitalik’s expectations in January.
The Verge, Purge and Splurge
After that is “The Verge”, which refers to the introduction and maintenance of “verkle trees”. This upgrade includes a “powerful upgrade in Merkle proofs,” which optimizes data storage for Ethereum Nodes. This will allow for more blockchain transactions, while keeping the blockchain decentralized. It will also aid in Ethereum scaling.
“The purge” is an upgrade similar to the one for validators (aka future Ethereum stakers). It will decrease the amount of hard drive space needed for validators, including historical data and bad debt. This will streamline storage and reduce network congestion.
The final upgrade will be “The Splurge”, a series “miscellaneous upgrades” that are intended to keep the network running smoothly after the previous four stages have been completed.
In an interview with Peter McCormack in August of 2020, Vitalik commented on the different attitudes towards blockchain upgrades between Bitcoiners and Ethereans:
“The difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum is that Bitcoiners consider Bitcoin to be 80% complete, but Ethereans consider Ethereum to be 40% complete,” he said.
In a Twitter thread in May, Vitalik suggested that he partially envies the “long-term stability” emphasized by Bitcoin. He recognizes however that Ethereum will need to make a lot more “active, short-term changes” before it can get there.
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